Discussing the Practice and Politics of Evaluating Foreign Aid

Mihir Desai is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Dexis Consulting Group, an international development consulting firm that worked in 75 locations in 2016 evaluating foreign assistance in its myriad of interventions – from global security to global health to global education. Mihir has worked in over 50 locations worldwide as staff at the World Bank and at a leading global consulting firms He holds an MBA from The George Washington University and a BA in Economics from Macalester College.

When the White House proposed budget cuts to international affairs, the largest of all federal cuts, it provided an accompanying note (“this is a hard power budget”) which suggested a radical shift towards assertion of US influence through military might, and away from the ‘smart power’ policy embraced for decades of combining defense, diplomacy and development. It’s a story of how federal programs fell prey to a belief system but also, as Mihir Desai argues, because agencies could not – and cannot – provide clinical-trial style evidence of what works in a dynamic development environment. Mihir Desai is CEO and founder of Dexis Consulting Group and has managed and implemented development aid programs since 1994.